Every Company Is A Media Company

The Economics of Social Business

By Don Bulmer Co-Authored By: Peter J. Auditore and Natalie Petouhoff

I have asked Natalie Petouhoff to join me in writing this week’s blog post. Natalie was a leading CRM analyst at the Forrester Group and I enjoyed meeting and spending time with her at the SCRM conference with the father of SCRM Paul Greenberg in Virginia. Natalie gets it and has teamed up with a colleague to create new models and metrics to measure the economic impact and business value of being social business. 

As you all know I am always on the bleeding edge of everything in whatever industry I am in and I am excited about participating in Natalie’s research.  I also think that this will be a thought provoking post.  In my section I have identified the economic pillars of social business; Natalie will provide us with some insights on how we might measure the impact of social media on the bottom line, so here goes.

If Every Company is a Media Company…Then Who Owns Social Media?

By Don Bulmer

Answer: Everyone!

Social media has evolved significantly from its roots in marketing and corporate communications to the point that it should no longer be viewed as merely a function or a discipline within a company. 

In a business context, social media is no longer just a destination or a set of tools and features.  It has evolved into a very powerful extension and dimension of work…a new way of thinking about how business is done.

Asking the question (today) 'who owns social media?' in business is like asking the question 'who owns email?' 

Ten basic media publishing skills anyone should know...

By Tom Foremski

Here are ten basic digital media skills anyone should know:

The Media Is Dying, Long Live The Media - The Media Tsunami Is Coming...

By Tom Foremski

Did you know that the first printed books in England would leave a blank rectangle at the beginning of a chapter so that an illuminated capital letter could be written in?

It's a great example of a hybrid publishing system, and we can see the same, although in different forms, as publishers transition to an online model.

This example, and other aspects of publishing's evolution over millennia, can be found in an excellent article based on a presentation by Guardian.co.uk Information Architect Martin Beam:

Journalism in the digital age: trends, tools and technologies.

But really it has been the development of the World Wide Web over the last 15 years or so which has utterly transformed the publishing landscape in our era. For mainstream journalism this has meant vastly increased distribution. The UK's major newspapers now have audited global monthly audience figures measured in the tens of millions, at a time when printed circulation continues a long-term decline.

Yes, but there's the rub: readership going through the roof but revenues falling. Usually, when readership rises, so do newspaper revenues, but this is not the case now. Wisely, Mr Beam doesn't tackle the thorny issue, or as I prefer to call it, the Gordian knot of the new media business model.

Thought Leadership – A New Social Currency

By Don Bulmer

Social media is a tremendous environment for B2B companies to establish competitive advantage through compelling thought leadership.

In a social environment, thought leadership allows companies to frame and stimulate conversation and collaboration around important and sometimes complex ideas and real-world business and socioeconomic problems – where their solutions are uniquely positioned to help address.

Through social media, companies can reach highly targeted audiences by role (CEOs, CIOs, developers, etc.), industry orientation and geography through any form of generic or specialized social network or community (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MyVenturePad.com, YouTube, etc.).

If compelling, people will contribute, share and internalize the thought leadership – giving companies a tremendous opportunity to influence agendas and establish standards in the market.

As outlined in a recent post by Rob Leavitt, in order to make an impact - thought leadership requires focus, depth and continuity.

For many companies this represents a big challenge due to a lack of skilled and trained staff (in house) to produce good, deep and continuous thought leadership - on their own.

Where resources are limited (in-house) many companies rely on external 'thought leaders' and influencers such as high profile academics, analysts, consultants and industry experts to help shape industry conversations.

Every company is a media company

Tom Foremski has made a passionate and compelling case for why every company is now a media company - in the wake of a disrupted and distributed media industry.

The cascade of the strengthening forces behind the disruption of the media industry (that Tom outlines) has forever changed how corporations manage their communications, reputations, brands and execution of business strategies.

On the positive side, companies now have the ability (and forced accountability) to communicate directly with its key audiences – giving them greater reach and more influence than traditional media has ever offered as a primary channel in the past. 

On the flip side, success in a new media environment requires a shift in how companies use their cadre of resources including employees, customers, partners and external influencers to be successful.

As every company is now a media company...every person is now (also) a media entity. 

Those companies that maximize and mobilize its employees and external stakeholders around important ideas and issues - will be successful.

This is where thought leadership can play a powerful role.

Some Notes On Why Every Company Needs To Become A Media Company...

By Tom Foremski

With the demise of "mass media" the old rules of having a media presence have changed. Here are some notes on why companies need to develop some of the same skills that media companies have, in generating great media.

- Large companies have had an advantage in hogging the media limelight because of their large teams of corporate comms people and use of large PR agencies. They worked with a relatively small number of journalists in print, TV, and radio.

Over time those journalists were educated on the company/clients and it was possible to establish a large media presence across different platforms and channels.

- This traditional approach is fairly expensive and it takes many well paid professionals to create and maintain media relations. It's not something that was available to smaller companies.

- This traditional approach ensured a high quality media product such as an article in BusinessWeek, or a segment on a national news TV program, because the media was produced by large teams of media professionals.

- With the shrinkage in traditional media and it's ongoing challenges, this approach to building a media presence is much more difficult today. There are fewer media professionals to work with, and the ones that remain are overworked and have to do more with less.

Social Media Discovery Is The First Step to Being A Media Company

by Vanessa DiMauro

In order to get in the game of being a media company one must first figure out where their company stands. 

Starting a strategic social media plan can be overwhelming. There are a few big questions that can cause organizational paralysis...the most daunting of which is "where do we begin?" followed by "what's happening that we don't know about?" 

But knowledge is a catalyst to action. And, as with the formation of most business strategies, you need to understand it in order to set a course for change.

Creating a social strategy...

So in order to begin to formulate social strategy within an enterprise, the first place to start is to conduct a discovery audit: to find out what is happening in the social sphere. Only then can programs be developed that engage best practices. 

Meeting Cisco's Head Of M&A And Realizing Every Company Is A Media Company

By Tom Foremski

After I left the Financial Times in mid-2004 to begin publishing Silicon Valley Watcher, I was worried that I wouldn't have the same access to top executives as I enjoyed at the FT.

I needn't have worried and soon found that I had the same, or even better access, because now I had built some notoriety by becoming the first journalist to leave a major newspaper to become a professional "blogger."

Intel held an emergency meeting by its corporate communications staff based on my leaving the FT, to discuss how they must now have a strategy of working with "bloggers."

I still thought of myself as a journalist, since as far as I was concerned, I was still writing the same type of stories I was writing at the FT. Just because I was using a blogging software platform, Movable Type to publish my stories, didn't make me a "blogger." But "blogger" was a scary word in those days as companies struggled to understand what this meant.

Interestingly, Intel held an emergency meeting when CNet's News.com was launched in the mid 1990s. The corporate communications team wondered if online news reporters should be treated the same as print reporters.

But it wasn't just Intel that struggled with such definitions, of who is or who isn't a journalist, all companies have, and many still do. Intel made the transition very quickly.

One of my first top interviews on Silicon Valley Watcher was visiting Cisco and meeting with Dan Scheinman, who was at the time, head of mergers and acquisitions at Cisco. This was one of the most powerful jobs in Silicon Valley because of the tremendous number of acquisitions Cisco was making -- and continues to make. (Here's the list.)

What was extra interesting about Mr Scheinman was that he was Director of Corporate Communications and head of acquisitions, spending billions of dollars a year.

Social Media: Why Business Leaders Should Care

By Don Bulmer

I had a great discussion last week with Mike Kelly, CEO at Techtel, and Peter Auditore, about social media and why business leaders should care.

If you agree with the premise that we now live and work in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more ‘social’ then it is easy to understand that new rules in business are being written for companies to be successful and compete.

Social media now thrives in a dynamic environment as a result of the convergence of many great enabling technologies built around the Internet, Web 2.0, and mobile along with advancements in bandwidth and connectivity (among other things).

We now operate in a world where hundreds of millions of people are seamlessly connected through devices and the Internet - sharing billions of pieces of content, information and experiences on a daily basis. It is just amazing.

Why Every Company Is a Media Company

By Vanessa DiMauro

What do you get when a VP of Influencer Relations from SAP, the founder of Silicon-Valley Watcher and former Financial Times Journalist and a Social Media strategist come together?

The answer is lively discussions and debate about the impact of social media upon business. Don Bulmer, Tom Foremski and I have recently formed a lyceum of sorts and meet regularly to discuss this very topic.  In addition to thoroughly engaging and timely discussion, we are also forming a framework for understanding social media in a business context. We believe that social strategy is and needs to become about more than just marketing, and will be woven into the very fabric of the enterprise as a strategic platform.

We are actively exploring the idea that every company is a media company. Initially, I had a negative, knee-jerk reaction that this didn’t concept sound right. How can every company be a media company? Why would every company need or want to be a media company?

When this idea was first introduced by Tom Foremski, my mind quickly went to a mis-interpretation of the concept.. every company is a media company meaning that each should be mini-publisher, every organization now needing to be burdened with complex publishing cycles. I recoiled from the thesis...

Everyone knows that enterprise success is predicated on competitive advantage, best products and services, excellent customer service, and right pricing. Being a media company is the last thing strategic executives need to have on their minds to excel in today’s global economy!